Denial is the spice of life. It can be more enduring than friendship, more stubborn than love – and more fun than a chainsaw factory in Texas.

It can also be – almost – gallant. Insane, of course but close to admirable:

Estonian police had asked a court to seize a car owned by a blind man who was caught driving drunk twice in a single week, saying it was a “dangerous repeat offence”.

On the first occasion Kristjan, who owns the vehicle but has no driving licence, was guided at the wheel by a 16-year-old boy who also lacks a driving permit.

Kristjan, who is facing 30 days behind bars, reportedly told police that he likes driving and regularly gets behind the wheel.

Denial can also be quite a handy little tool. One of the most irritating things in life is that, if you have some kind of problem, people actually expect you to do something about it and solve it. Most of the time this involves work, which can be highly annoying. One of the strategies to avoid this problem solving nonsense is to point at other people and claim that they have much bigger problems than you.

That’s the reason that Europeans secretly love the USA. So, you have high unemployment figures, a lagging economy, large groups of immigrants who are – how to say this politely… – not really into integration… but still, who cares whenÂ you can always point at the US and say:

What do you mean, “We’re so fucked. Look at them!”

So, when last week that story hit the news about the bullet proof backpacks for school children, lots of European newspapers commented on this with some righteous, ‘Ye Olde Worlde’ glee.

Those same newspapers though were a lot more subdued when another, similar story broke – but now on their side of the Pond:

A company is offering to modify blazers and jumpers by lining them with knife-resistant Kevlar.

Still, when it comes to denial, nobody can beat the good folks in the White House. Even a raving madman like Hitler, in the end, accepted that the war was lost. Not with a lot of good grace, I’ll give you that, but he did face reality long enough to bite the bullet, so to speak.

Not much chance of that with the Bush team, of course. The official party line is still that the Iraq war can and will be won.

So, when an old interview was found and broadcast again, in which Cheney clearly stated that it would be total madness to invade Iraq, the White House immediately replied in their usually robust manner, showing that denial is still their default deity of choice:

A spokesperson from the Vice President’s press office reacted to the video by saying:

“He was not Vice President at the time, it was after he was Secretary of Defense. I don’t have any comment.”

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on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 10:30 and is filed under Columns.
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